Seattle

This trip arrived exactly when I needed it and when I wasn’t yet ready for it. I planned the trip—a drive through some of the National Parks of Washington—back in February, for the purpose of using the last of our 2020 airline credits.

Six weeks before our departure, my covid-free streak and my Wordle streak broke in the same week (SO RUDE). A few weeks after recovering, some of my symptoms boomeranged back—chest tightness, shortness of breath, light-headedness, and a lingering cough. So I’m a little grumpy and a lot concerned about my stamina on this trip, planned to be full of hiking and roughing it in a camper van. But I’m doing my best to roll with it, toting my meds along with me and doing regular self-check-ins on how I’m feeling.

On Saturday morning, Kurt and I kill some time doing touristy things at Pike Place Market and grab a breakfast of eggs with fried oysters and salmon, then it’s time to pick up the van. We’d love to bring our van from home, but in the interest of time, we found a place to rent a conversion van in Seattle. To our delight, our assigned camper van is a Ford Econoline nicknamed Kung Fu, custom-painted with a dragon on each side and two Koi fish swimming in a yin yang on one of the rear doors. There’s bench seating and a table that convert into a bed, and a kitchen area in the rear with a fridge, pump-operated sink, gray water storage, and a Propane grill. After a quick grocery run, it’s time to hit the road in the direction of Olympic National Park.

Sequim

We drive for a few hours in moderate rain until we cross the floating Hood Canal Bridge, officially entering the Peninsula. Our first campsite is at Sequim Bay State Park, an area known for elk turning up in peoples’ yards and a recent local political scandal involving their mayor’s vocal support of QAnon conspiracy theories (when our camper van rep told us to Google the Mayor, Kurt had hoped that the Mayor was a cat).

The campground is pretty, full of towering pine trees with a view of the bay visible through the foliage, but I’m feeling apprehensive about my first night camping while not feeling 100%. The upcoming forecast looks like a solid green mass of rain coming right at us. Kurt whips up a quick dinner of brats and green beans before the storm rolls in. After we eat, the storm still hasn’t arrived, so we walk down to the Bay and check out the view. I love the Pacific Northwest with its mix of mountains, water, coastal fog, and old-growth forests. We spot a group of seals hanging out not far from the pier. I relax a little; while I may not be myself these days, I need to remember to enjoy the little things.

It gets dark out and the rain still never arrives, so we make our first campfire of the trip. I go to bed early, snuggled into the surprisingly comfortable converted bed with my book.

Port Angeles/Lake Crescent/Sol Duc

From Sequim, it’s on to Port Angeles; you may know this as the city in Twilight where Bella and her friends go for dress shopping and Italian dinner dates. We find a place called Lola’s Cafe and I am delighted to see a Filipino breakfast on the menu. I’m in heaven with my longanisa, spam, garlic rice, and giant coffee. We also get some donuts for the road from a place called Sasquatch Donuts. While walking off our breakfast, we wander over to the pier and get a brief glimpse through the fog of Canada across the Salish Sea. Kurt checks the webcam for Hurricane Ridge, one of our potential stops for the day. The visibility is close to zero, which makes going forty-five minutes out of our way to check out the mountain view a futile exercise.

Lucky for us, there’s tons of things to do instead, so we enter Olympic National Park and take a scenic drive around Lake Crescent. The hike to Marymere Falls is easy and family-friendly, which sounds good to my lungs, so we pack up a daypack and set out.

I immediately love this National Park. Every direction you turn in looks like a Bob Ross painting come to life. The early summer light that filters through the clouds and tree canopy makes everything look a little more magical. No wonder the vampires sparkle here! We make it to the viewing platform and feel the spray of the waterfall on our skin. Kurt was smart to buy those donuts and pack them into our daypack, so we choose a spot next to a babbling stream to enjoy them. My grumpiness is melting away; I love it here. I love hiking, even if I need to take it easy. We can stop for as many breaks as I need. I’ll figure out how to adapt.

There’s another waterfall nearby our reserved campsite, so we tackle that next, but as we pull into the trailhead parking lot the light drizzle has grown into heavy rain. We see a few hikers run to their vehicle in sopping wet jeans, the absolute worst. Kurt and I grab our rain pants from our bags to pair with our rain jackets. I also opt to take along a hiking pole in case the trail gets slippery. The Sol Duc Falls Trail is another easy 1.6 mile out-and-back, and judging from the parking lot, the rain has thinned out the usual crowds. We reach the falls quickly, and admire the view from the wood bridge straddling the dramatic drop-off. “This is serving Six Flags Splashwater Falls vibes,” I say to Kurt (and will say again roughly 1,000 times before the end of the trip).

We get back to the van and it’s still pouring rain. We could go to our campsite and sit in the rain, or we could go to the nearby hot springs resort (obviously a no-brainer). “You know what would be amazing in a camper van? A mud room,” I saw to Kurt as we attempt to hang up our wet rain jackets and rain pants somewhere they can air dry while not dripping all over the seats and bedding. We do a decent enough job, but this is the kind of trip where you must make peace with the fact that everything’s always going to be at least a little bit damp, from the blackout curtains to the comforter and pillows to your fleece jacket that you wear beneath your rain jacket. During the day there’s intermittent rain, and at night, condensation clings to everything inside the van.

The hot springs feel amazing. The resort consists of four pools—three of them naturally heated at temps ranging from 99 to 109 degrees, and one lap-sized pool filled with children apparently immune to freezing water. The resort is egalitarian compared to the bougie hot springs we visited near Taos earlier this year. Kids kick around in water wings in the 107-degree pool, and the concrete ground is covered with some sort of brown goopy mildew extremely slippery beneath wet feet. But still, it’s blissful to sit neck-deep in the sulphuric hot water, gazing at the misty mountain ridge in the distance; the steam feels soothing on my messed-up lungs. We strike up conversation with a woman sitting nearby who is visiting from Alaska, and have a pleasant conversation about Copper River and what it’s like to live somewhere where a bald eagle may drop a still-alive salmon into your backyard for dinner.

Back to camp and the rain has stopped, so we attempt to make a fire, but the wet wood slows down the process. After a meager little fire, we retire to the van to sleep amidst damp curtains and the sound of the Sol Duc River.